The General in His Labyrinth is a 1989 dictator novel by Colombian writer and Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez. It is a fictionalized account of the last seven months of Simón Bolívar, liberator and leader of Gran Colombia. The book is set on the Caribbean coastline of Colombia in his attempt to leave South America for exile in Europe. It depicts a pathetic protagonist, a prematurely aged man who is physically ill and mentally exhausted.
About The General in His Labyrinth in brief
The General in His Labyrinth is a 1989 dictator novel by Colombian writer and Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez. It is a fictionalized account of the last seven months of Simón Bolívar, liberator and leader of Gran Colombia. The novel is set in 1830, at the tail end of the initial campaign to secure Latin America’s independence from Spain. Many prominent Latin American figures believed that the novel portrayed a negative image to the outside world of one of the region’s most important historic figures. Others saw the novel as a tonic for Latin American culture and a challenge to the region to deal with its problems. The book is set on the Caribbean coastline of Colombia in his attempt to leave South America for exile in Europe. It depicts a pathetic protagonist, a prematurely aged man who is physically ill and mentally exhausted, in which “despair, sickness, and death inevitably win out over love, health, and life” The story explores the labyrinth of Bolísvar’s life through the narrative of his memories, and the book is a mixture of genres, with many commentators disagree over where it lies on the scale between novel and historical account. It was written after reading an unfinished novel by his friend and fellow Colombian writer Álvaro Mutis. Mutis had started writing a book called El Último rostro about Bolí var’s final voyage along the Magdalena River, but never finished it. García MáRquez spent two years researching the subject, encompassing the extensive memoirs of Bolí var’s Irish aide-de-camp, Daniel Florencio O’Leary, as well as numerous other historical documents and consultations with academics.
He used an inventory drawn up by Perezdoval to describe which nights BolíVar spent under a full moon. The task was difficult, both because of his lack of experience in conducting historical research, and because of the lack of documentary evidence for the events of the final period of Bolíaver’s life. Within a few decades of Christopher Columbus’s landing on the coast of what is now Venezuela in 1498, South America had effectively conquered Spain and virtually cut off the Spanish throne from the colonies. The colonies were virtually cut-off from Spain, and inspired many creoles and creoles inspired by the French Revolutions of 1808, abdication of Charles IV, Ferdinand VII, Charles IV’s renouncement of his right to succeed, and Joseph Bonaparte’s placement on the throne of Spain. The novel was written as a result of these factors, including Napoleon’s invasion of Spain in 1808 and Spain’s control over its colonies. It is also set in the 1830s, when most of Spanish America gained independence; only Cuba and Puerto Rico remained under Spanish rule; within a few years of this date, only a few months later, Puerto Rico and Cuba were virtually conquered by Christopher Columbus were virtually cut off from Spanish control. At the time, García Mánquez was interested in writing about the Magdalena River because he knew the area intimately from his childhood.
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